Note 62.3 — Chapter III · THE SECOND PERIOD, 900-500 B.C.

Again the name Ἥρως comes to be applied to even the most shadowy of these functional powers, to Μυίαγρος, the Fly-chaser, the most limited and momentary of them all, to Eunostos, the daimon of good harvest, about whom a very human tale is told, and to call them ‘Heroes’ implies that they were imagined as semi-divine men who once lived on the earth. Even the most immaterial forces, some of those which mark mental phases or social conditions, such as Ἐρως Love, Φιλία Friendship, Εἰρήνη Peace, became often for the religious imagination personal individuals with human relationships;62.3 thus Eirene emerges almost as a real goddess with the traits of Demeter, Φιλία on a relief in the Jacobsen Collection is individualised as the mother of Zeus Philios, in defiance of the traditional theogony.63.1 Others such as ‘Αἰδώς’ ‘Compassion’ remained in the borderland between animating forces and personal deities.